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470.

PUBLIC RECORD

OFFICE

༄། ། ། །

Reference :-

C.O. 885

10

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH—NOT TO

No. 224.

(BRITISH HONDURAS.)

QUEEN'S ADVOCATE to FOREIGN OFFICE.

MY LORD,

Doctors' Commons, January 14, 1864. I AM honoured with your Lordship's commands, signified in Mr. Hammond's lotter of the 9th January instant, stating that he was directed to transmit to me a letter from the Admiralty enclosing copies of a letter from Vice-Admiral Milne with other papers on the subject of the repair at Bermuda of certain vessels employed in running the blockade of the ports of the so-called Confedorate States, and to request that I would take those papers into consideration and report to your Lordship my opinion thereupon.

In obedience to your Lordship's commands, I have taken these papers into considera- tion, and have the honour to

Report

That it is certainly no part of the duty of a neutral Government according to the existing usage and practice of international law to inquire into the destination of merchant vessels belonging to its country, or to aid by any domestic regulations, directly or indirectly, the maintenance of the belligerent's blockade which hie, and he alone, is bound to make effectual. His right to capture the neutral vessel which attempts to break the blockade, or to seize contraband merchandise on board of her, is not attended by any correlative obligation on the part of the state to which the vessel belongs to take any active steps in support of this right. The neutral state cannot lawfully complain if the 'vessel or the merchandise be thus captured or thus seized by the belligerent cruiser, but with this passive acquiescence, so to speak, in the act of the belligerent, the strict obligations of neutrality in this matter, so far as the state is concerned, are satisfied.

I do not, therefore, think that the United States Government would be legally warranted in preferring a formal complaint against Her Majesty's Government for allowing among other British vessels some to be repaired in Government dockyards which were without the privity or consent of the Government employed in breaking the blockade. In other words, the belligerent Government would have no legal right to call upon the neutral Government to exclude from the general privilege of repair in the dockyards (of which, too, its own vessels in this instance partake) a particular class of British vessels which they alleged to be, or which were, commonly reported to be what are called blockade runners. It is of course competent to Her Majesty's Govern- ment, or to the Admiral representing Her Majesty's Government, to make a regulation excluding certain vessels from this privilege, and regard being had to the particular circumstances of this war, and to the position and peculiar character of the Bermuda Islands, the exclusion of particular vessels which, after having been repaired in these docks, have proceeded to break the blockade, may be, probably is, a justifiable and prudent measure, though this is a power which ought, I think, to be sparingly exer- cised; but it certainly seems to me that the exaction from all vessels seeking repair of a bond that they "shall not be engaged within three months directly or indirectly in the business of breaking the blockade" is, independently of the difficulty and extreme inconvenience to the Government, incident to a proceeding for the enforcement of penalties for the breach of such bond, open to the general objection of being far too strong a measure for a state desirous of maintaining a strict neutrality to at a step approaching too closely the act of assisting one belligerent to maintain against another his blockade, which, it must always be remembered, the belligerent is bound by law to render sufficient for its purpose by his own means at the place where it is instituted.

I am, &c. The Earl Russell.

(Signed) ROBERT PHILLIMORE,

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